


Of England

by straightforwardly



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Post-Last Battle, References to Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-13 00:51:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10503012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straightforwardly/pseuds/straightforwardly
Summary: Years after the train accident, Susan returns to the Professor’s house.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Wavesinger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/gifts).



> This was originally meant to be a Chocolate Box treat, but I didn’t finish it in time. 
> 
> Many thanks to pulchressa for the beta! Any remaining errors are my own.

The road twisted in a sharp curve, and the Professor’s old house suddenly rose up before her. The roar of the engine came to a halt around her as Susan pulled at the brake.

In that first glimpse, it seemed as though a decade and more had rewound and she was a child again, freshly sent away from the danger of the air raids and seeing that old, majestic manor house for the first time. Then she looked longer, and saw that time and neglect had taken its toll. The roof was in shambles, the walls were long past due for new paint, and the lawn was unkempt as an open invitation to the slow encroachment of the surrounding wood. 

And who knew what further problems were hidden from the eye? It’d take a fortune to renovate. Easier to knock the whole thing down and build anew over the remains. Easier still to sell the whole thing and wash her hands of the lot.

Not for the first time, she thought: she was a secretary. What need did she have for a manor?

Susan stepped out from the car, and took a moment to smooth down her skirt and tuck away any unruly strands of hair. Then she pulled her purse and trunk out from the car, and headed for the front door. Up close, the house didn’t look any better: the varnish was peeling from the front door.

For a moment she considered knocking to announce her arrival. Then she reached into her purse and pulled out a large brass key instead. She unlocked the door, and let herself in. 

The entrance hall was dark, lit only by the late afternoon sun filtering through the curtained windows. She left her trunk there and began to walk through the familiar halls and rooms. 

Much had changed. Once-bright carpets had faded, as had the curtains hanging from the windows. The leather furniture had cracked, and many of the windows had grown fogged and dim. She had remembered everything being so fine and full of wonder, shining in the way childhood memories often did. Now, all those wondrous things had grown old and tired and worn. 

Based on the house’s exterior, she’d half-expected to find everything covered in fine layers of dust as well, but perhaps that had been unfair of her. All that she could see had been meticulously cleaned, despite the state of disrepair it had fallen into. 

All this she saw through the faintest suggestion of sunlight. It was not only the entrance hall that lacked electric light; every room Susan entered was filled with shadows, though she could see from the switches that electricity had been installed. A sensible decision, considering the circumstances; Susan approved.

About fifteen minutes into her wandering, she heard the sound of footsteps not her own creaking against the floorboards. Susan looked up as they reached the doorway of the room she was currently in to find a woman somewhere in her sixties standing there. 

“Mrs. Macready,” she said politely, and extended her hand. “It’s a pleasure. I’m not sure if you’d recognize me; I’m Susan Pevensie. I called earlier this week to say I was coming.”

She looked Mrs. Macready over as she spoke. She was much as Susan had remembered her: stern-faced and grim, with the only real change being the addition of sharper wrinkles around her mouth and increased white in her hair. 

Mrs. Macready looked at her for a long moment. When she spoke, it was with an air of suddenness. “I remember you. Well-mannered, at least for a child, and pretty; I see you’ve kept the prettiness. You’re a few days earlier than I’d expected. I would have prepared more for you. Turned on the lights, at the very least.”

Then, because she wasn’t the sort to be rude to her employer, even an employer she hadn’t seen since they were a child, she took Susan’s hand in her own and shook it.

“You needn’t worry about the lights. Leave them as they are,” said Susan. Mrs. Macready looked as though this offended her mean sense of propriety, so she added, with a dry sort of irony, “It’s not as though I were some sort of nobility; we can spare the electricity.”

Mrs. Macready didn’t seem much appeased by Susan’s words, but accepted them with an incline of the head. 

“I don’t suppose the Professor ever had a motor house built, did he?” Susan went on. “I didn’t see one coming in.”

“You drove?”

“Yes. It seemed practical. It’s not as though there are many ways to get this far out, after all.”

“Hm. True enough. Even the nearest train station is ten miles off— and I suppose you wouldn’t be so eager to take the train anyhow.” This she said with a quick, piercing look.

Susan’s stomach roiled. She forced her voice to remain smooth. “No, I wouldn’t.”

Mrs. Macready hummed in acknowledgement, and Susan took advantage of the pause to say, “Have you a room made ready for me? I’m afraid the drive here rather wore me out.”

“Of course it did,” Mrs. Macready said in a rather disapproving tone. “Your room is ready— fortunately, I’ve never been the sort to put that kind of thing off. Where are your things?”

“In the front hall. I’ll get them myself.”

Mrs. Macready let out another telling sound of disapproval, but made no outward protest. 

To Susan’s relief, she did not led Susan to the room she had shared before with Lucy. Of course she hadn’t; that had been a child’s room, and Susan was no longer a child. It had been a foolish thought. 

The room was also nowhere near the third floor, where the Wardrobe Room had been. Susan very carefully did not question why this, too, relieved her.

* * *

Susan woke the next morning hungry and discontent, as she’d skipped supper the evening before and spent the night slipping in and out of a restless half-sleep.

She breakfasted together with Mrs. Macready in the kitchen. It threatened to become awkward, but Susan was polite and Mrs. Macready proper and together they somehow managed to muddle through. After, Susan stood to leave, but Mrs. Macready stopped her. 

“The Professor left something for you here, for when you came back,” she said in an abrupt sort of way. “Told me so, before he left that time. Not that I know how he knew he’d be passing on so sudden-like, but he always was a curious one.”

Mrs. Macready took her to a room she knew well: the Professor’s former office. She rummaged around in the desk as Susan watched and tried not to remember how first she and Peter, then she and the rest of her siblings, had once stood at this very spot. How immeasurably eternal the Professor had seemed, then. How immeasurably wise. 

Finally, Mrs. Macready came out with what looked to be a book, wrapped in plain brown paper and tied together with a bit of string.

“There it is,” she said as she handed it over to Susan. “I have to say, I’m glad that’s done with. I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t been weighing on me. I’ll leave you to it; I’ve plenty of work to get to, anyhow.”

Susan waited until Mrs. Macready had left before turning her attention to the package. After a moment’s hesitation, she opened it, slow and careful. It _was_ a book, and an old one at that, all creaking leather and worn parchment. Beautiful illustrations covered each page, accompanied by Latin script. Most of the images were of animals, both common and strange. It was, she realized, a medieval bestiary.

Why had the Professor left her this?

An ugly, anxious feeling took over her. She continued to carefully turn the pages, looking for an explanation, a hint, anything. 

After a few moments of this, she noticed an envelope wedged in near the middle of the book. She turned to that page and stopped. She couldn’t read a word of Latin, but it didn’t matter what the text said. She understood the meaning well-enough. There on the parchment, colored red and staring into the distance, was the image of a lion.

The image shook; it took her a moment to realize that it was her hands, trembling. She set the book down with care on the uncluttered desk, and drew the Professor’s letter from the envelope. There were only a few lines written there, and her eyes darted over the page as she took them in.

Tears pricked at her eyes. Suddenly, she couldn’t bear to stay in the house a moment more. It was a battlefield: everywhere she went, there was the potential of stepping on an old memory like a mine. 

She folded the letter back into the envelope, closed the book, and left it all there on the Professor’s desk. She went down the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door before she thought to question where she was going. She looked to her car, but no, her things were still in the house, and the car key too, and besides, she couldn’t leave before doing— doing whatever it was that needed to be done, here. Before she decided. 

So she turned to the woods instead. There were memories there, too, of the days where she and her siblings had played there, but those were different sorts of memories. Safer.

The wood was green with summer and full of bird-song, and while walking through it did not make Susan forget what had brought her there, it did take a little of the immediacy of it away. She’d gone for practical flat-heeled shoes that morning, reasoning that there was only Mrs. Macready to see her. She was glad of that now, as she picked her way through the undergrowth.

The thoughts still threatened to crowd her mind. She directed her focus to her path instead. The soil under her feet was soft and moist, sinking in under every step: exactly the sort of dirt she’d liked to walk barefoot through as a little girl. Lucy had never outgrown that; Susan had often thought that even as a matron Lucy would have been pulling her shoes off to run through the dirt at the first opportunity. 

She tore her eyes from the ground and looked to the trees instead: the thick trunks, the moss crawling up their sides, and the heavy branches growing thinner as they reached for the sky, hiding it from sight with their glossy leaves. 

They’d come across a fallen tree here, Susan remembered, on one of those early, sunny days when they’d first come to the Professor’s. When they’d found it, Peter had snapped off one of the smaller branches for a mock sword fight. Edmund and Lucy had quickly followed, and even she had joined in with a little coaxing. She could almost still hear the sound of their laughing shrieks and the crack of wood striking wood, as though the forest had encased the sound in amber. But there was no amber here; there was only her own aching memory. 

She saw no sign of the tree now. Perhaps it had been located elsewhere. Or perhaps the Professor had had it removed; he’d always been conscientious in his care. It had only been the war, and then the passing of the old manor house into her own benign neglect, that had allowed it to begin its decay.

Susan pushed those thoughts away.

Presently, she became aware of a sound— a song— that rose beyond that of the birds and yet kept in tune with them, and rang soft but clear through the air and trees. It was as a human voice, but sweeter and more pure than any Susan had ever heard— in England.

She did not quite decide to seek out the source of it, but her feet followed the sound nonetheless. Something about it filled her heart, though she could not make out the words. It made her want to weep; it made her want to sing.

As she neared, a third sound joined the chorus: the susurrus of running water. Susan quickened her step, she parted the low-hanging branches blocking the way— and there she was.

In the middle of a shallow stream stood a woman, tall and fair-faced, with golden hair falling to her knees like a sheet of silk. Though her form was human in every detail she could see, there was something about her beauty that was unlike any human woman Susan had ever laid eyes upon. From her mouth came the song that Susan had heard. She could hear it clearly now, but still she did not understand the words. The woman sang in a language she did not know. 

The woman turned and saw Susan and smiled, but did not stop singing, and Susan did not interrupt her. The woman’s eyes were deep and blue. 

The song wound to its end.

Susan said, “Who are you?”

She half-regretted it the moment she said it— the words sounded so plain, after the beauty of that song.

“I am Goldberry,” said the woman, and her voice was as clear and sweet as her song.

The name was a dryad-name; the song was a naiad-song. Susan’s heart quickened. “Yes, but _who_ are you?” 

It was, perhaps, a little rude to demand this of someone she’d just met. In that moment, Susan hardly cared over the roaring of her pulse in her ears.

Goldberry’s smile shifted. It had been kind before but it was kinder now, and understanding. She said, “River-daughter they once called me, of a River now long gone; now, I am the River, and one day daughters shall be born of me.”

“You’re a naiad,” Susan said. Unbelieving, and, unwillingly, understanding.

Goldberry tilted her head. “I have heard that name given to me and my sisters, first after my mother had long been gone.”

Her answer, Susan noticed, was not quite an agreement. 

Then Goldberry opened her mouth again and began to sing again, a sweet, mournful song. It was a song of endings and slow decay, of a time long gone and the people and places lost with it. It was a song of forests, of ancient trees and rolling hills, of rustling streams, of a world unblemished by man’s touch. 

Susan had tried not to cry in the years after the accident. There had been little point to it, she’d thought: she’d been fully alone and needed to be strong if she wanted to carry on. But the melancholy of Goldberry’s song filled her; she found her eyes brimming with traitorous tears. 

Still she tried to hold them back, to hold herself together. But Goldberry continued to sing, her voice full of a gentle pain, until Susan could not hold back any longer. 

She broke, and found herself weeping without reserve.

There was something cleansing and pure about those tears. When the song ended, she was not embarrassed, though she had expected to be, and she wiped her tears away and felt her heart a little eased. 

Sadness touched the edges of Goldberry’s smile. She said, “You remind me of times long lost. It is a hard thing to remember, but also good. I would not like to forget.”

Susan had thought her courage long lost to her, but something about Goldberry’s words and song brought a little bit of it back to her, enough to speak the name of the land that she’d thought she’d never give voice to again. “Are you... of Narnia?” 

Goldberry inclined her head. “You surprise me. I had thought I knew the touch of every place where water flows, and yet I have never heard of that land until this moment.”

Susan could not contain her surprise. “Then— you’re _English_?”

It betrayed every understanding Susan had. Of England, of Narnia, of the way she and her siblings had always delineated between _There_ and _Here_ , and what _There_ meant too. And yet she knew somehow Goldberry did not lie— would not lie. 

Horribly, she remembered a deep, warm but ungentle voice, telling her she would never return— but telling her to search. 

“This distresses you.” Goldberry stepped towards her, genuine concern etched on her face. There was a steadiness in her words no Narnian naiad could have ever replicated. Susan didn’t know how she hadn’t noticed it before.

“It’s no fault of yours,” said Susan. She said it first because she did not want Goldberry to think otherwise, though she didn’t know why that had suddenly become so important to her. Then, with difficulty, she continued. “Only, I spent many years there” — and those too were words difficult to form, after so many years of denying it, “— and I had thought, or assumed, that there was no magic in this world. That it all belonged there.”

Goldberry was very near her now, her eyes bright with interest. “All lands have their stories,” she murmured. “You do as well, I see. Will you sit beside me at my river, and share a portion of your tale with me?”

Susan’s throat closed. She thought of the old house, the Professor’s letter, the train. It was as though a spell had been broken, or cast again. She thought she would run, as she had ever since her siblings had died, or perhaps even longer.

“I don’t know if I can,” she found herself saying instead.

“I see,” said Goldberry, and there was true understanding there. “Then will you sit by me, and listen to a little of my tale?”

As she spoke, Goldberry touched Susan’s cheek, and her hand was warm where Susan thought it would be cool. She had a flash of memory, long-buried. Of Lucy, in Narnia, dancing wild with dryads and allowing them to take her by the hand and lead her deeper into the wood. And of Susan herself, standing surrounded by sly-speaking suitors, watching, and wondering. 

In that moment, she felt herself a school-girl and Queen of Narnia all at once.

* * *

She accepted, like the Lucy in her memories, and Goldberry took her by the hand and drew her down to the water’s edge to a large stone she hadn’t noticed before. It was wide enough to seat them both, but just barely— there was perhaps a half-inch of space between them. Susan took off her shoes and socks and sat with her feet dipped into the water. 

When they were settled, Goldberry began to weave her tale. She spoke at length; at times she sang, sometimes in plain English, and sometimes in that strange language Susan could not understand and yet grasped the meaning of perfectly. She spoke of creatures Susan had never seen nor heard of in England or Narnia, of Dwarves both like and unlike Narnian Dwarves, and of still other things so like Narnia and yet utterly foreign as to not be similar at all. She spoke of battles and the individuals who fought in them, and she spoke of oaths, and darkness, and light. She spoke of the ending of an age, and of what was left behind to grow new again.

Not once did she mention herself. 

Susan asked about this, once Goldberry had finished. Hours had passed in the telling: morning had grown into afternoon, and still later. The sun had sunk low in the sky, enough so that the surrounding trees blocked much of the ending light. They had not supped, but somehow Susan felt little hunger. 

“I thought this was your tale,” she said. “But you said nothing about yourself. Where were you, when this all happened?”

“I watched,” said Goldberry simply. “And when all those things withered away to their final end— then, I watched too.”

Susan felt her words as a burning coal dropped into her chest. 

She’d never seen the site of the accident, but she’d pictured it so often in her mind that it was as though she had. The thick smoke, the scent of charred bodies, a smell she had learned well from war in Narnia, the awful wreckage of twisted metal— and herself, the only one untouched. 

“We first found Narnia in the back of a wardrobe, the first time,” she found herself saying suddenly. Her voice sounded like a distant thing, detached from her body and mind. “We spent years there, but when we came back we were children again. We found it again at a train station, but we didn’t stay as long that time. I was told I would never return, and so I started pretending that it had never existed at all. And then my brothers, my sister, and everyone else who had ever been there all died at once.”

“And only you left to remember,” said Goldberry. 

“Yes,” said Susan. Even as she said it, she thought it sounded small, inadequate for all the things that she felt and had tried not to feel. But it sounded right too, and she hated the messiness of that. The inconsistency. 

Goldberry stood and turned to her. She stood quite near; Susan could feel the warmth of her body, though they did not quite touch. Suddenly, she found herself aware of the thin cloth of Goldberry’s dress.

Goldberry looked at her with soft, mournful eyes. She said, “Once I would have offered my home to you, and given you good food and a warm bed to soothe away your ills. But that home passed on when my mother and all that was like her did, and now I have little to offer you: little, save for a song, and good, pure water.” And as she spoke she cupped her hands together before her like a bowl, and it filled with clear water that leaked through her fingers, though the bowl of her hands remained ever-full.

For a brief moment, Susan thought of Edmund— but there was nothing of the White Witch in Goldberry. She knew, also, that it was only that morning when she would never have accepted the offer. The offering.

She bent her head, and drank from Goldberry’s hands.

The water was ice-cold, like a mountain stream. She had not known how weary she was, in soul as well as in body, until she drank and felt herself awaken like a spring bloom. She looked up, and Goldberry looked back, sad, affectionate, ancient.

Susan kissed her.

She rose without thinking, she cupped Goldberry’s face in her hands, and she kissed her, drinking the taste of her lips like river-water. She kissed her, and Goldberry kissed her back, her hands at Susan’s waist, in Susan’s hair. She kissed her like drowning. She kissed her like the first gasp of breath. 

They fell into the water, still kissing, and the cool water flowed against them. They kissed, and kissed, and Goldberry’s dress fell away, and Susan’s clothing soon followed. They kissed, and Goldberry’s hands were so warm, and the river-water so cool. Susan drank her in: her lips, her breasts, the taut skin of her stomach, her cunt. And in turn Goldberry consumed her: the river consumed her. 

At last, weary and sated, they lay entwined, the river-water flowing over them.

* * *

Susan dressed. The night sky hung newborn above them, and the real world began to intrude anew. She had been gone all day; she hoped Mrs. Macready had not missed her but had little faith in her luck. She’d missed two meals.

She thought on the manor and the decision she still had to make, remembered the Professor and the message— the gift— he had left her. Though the ache of grief remained, it did not burn as it had before.

She thought: I can face this. 

Goldberry, still naked, touched her cheek again and drew her in for another brief kiss. This Susan allowed, thrilling in the touch.

Against her mouth, Goldberry said, “I will be here, have you ever need of me.”

“I’ll come back, whether I have need of you or not,” said Susan, her voice low, and knew it to be truth. 

Goldberry smiled, and her smile mirrored Susan’s heart, touched by grief, rising in hope.


End file.
